AFGHANISTAN - The Afghan Elections.

Soon after Powell visited Kabul last month, Afghan President Karzai said national elections planned for June will be held in September. Voter registration had been hampered by Afghanistan's remote geography, bureaucracy and poor security. About 1.5m voters had been registered out of an estimated 10m who are eligible to vote. But Karzai said it remained to be seen whether the country could hold presidential and parliamentary elections at the same time. US military officials have since said they expect Taliban and Al-Qaeda fighters to try to disrupt the elections.

Describing the situation in Afghanistan, the Berliner Zeitung on April 5 said: "The Afghan government needs three things: money, money and money...Some important questions appear to have been pushed out of the spotlight (during the March 31 Berlin conference of international donors for Afghanistan)... One of them is whether the elegant President Hamid Karzai, who is so highly regarded in the West, really is the right man for Afghanistan. The country now has a provisional constitution. But is he the man to disempower the warlords and disarm their militias in order to push through this constitution? Do the majority of Afghans recognise him and the model he represents for the future of Afghanistan?"